Treasured London music venue saved from closure after community campaign
Good news for London’s music fans as the popular Matchstick Piehouse in Lewisham is re-opening its doors for the first time in two years.
The iconic and self-proclaimed ‘anti-capitalist’ venue has hosted talent from Kamasi Washington, frequent collaborator with rapper Kendrick Lamar, Mercury prize winners Ezra Collective, and drummer Moses Boyd, to name just a few.
The Covid pandemic left the venue in £36,000 of debt to its landlord, meaning it had to close down towards the end of 2023, leaving frequent attenders devastated.
This is despite a fundraising campaign that raised £30,000 to try and pay the rent.
‘Matchstick Piehouse is exactly the kind of intimate venue that helps build connection, community and allows us to share collective joy. Please bring it back’, said Shim Vereker when the fundraiser was launched.
But the ‘Piehouse Co-op’, a group of former staff and artists from the Matchstick and workers from other local venues, have successfully negotiated a £15,000 capital grant from the Lewisham Council.
Alongside this financial help was support raised by the Music Venues Trust (MVT) and celebrities such as Kate Nash, whose ‘Butts for Tour Buses campaign’ brought awareness to hardships faced by venue owners and emerging artists.
This growing momentum helped the group to successfully negotiate a new lease with their landlord, at the same site in Deptford.
This can be considered a major victory in the grassroots music scene, as the MVT revealed, ‘two grassroots venues close a week in the UK.’
However, the coast isn’t quite clear for the venue yet, as it still needs to raise £15,000 to fully open the doors, as their latest Crowdfunder post explains: ‘We urgently still need to raise at least £15,000 to open the venue.
‘We are moving into a totally empty building, so we need to cover all the fit out and furnishing costs, as well as some pre-trading costs such as staff wages.’
The group has rallied together in response to this, by hosting a series of fundraising gigs to try and reach their goal.
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Jamie Rudd, a fundraiser for the group who helped organise the events, said ‘they went very well’ and ‘go a long way’ in helping the dream of opening in February 2025 come true.
Plans for re-opening are well underway, and audiences can expect similar line-ups of music, comedy, and theatre they grew to love before the venue closed.
Other acts are on the way as Grace O’Malley, another staff member, adds: ‘If anything, we’re planning even more gigs.
‘It will definitely look different but will have the same values at the core. We just want people to recognise that we’re valuable to the community, even if people with money don’t want us there.’
The link for the Matchstick Piehouse’s fundraiser can be found here if you would like to donate.
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